


Okay

by babel



Series: Lost Time [1]
Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-09
Updated: 2012-09-09
Packaged: 2017-11-13 21:54:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/508110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babel/pseuds/babel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim and Jay during the filming of Marble Hornets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Okay

"I'm so sick of this. I'm out. I'm out."

"Oh, you're out. What will we do without you? I mean, we could replace you with a block of wood, but then it'd out-act everyone else."

"And you wonder why everyone hates you now. You're fucking crazy."

Alex goes silent for a moment, staring Tim down. "You don't know crazy. This isn't even the beginning of crazy." Then, he stalks off, shoving past Jay and Seth on his way to the street. Tim rolls his eyes and heads in the opposite direction, toward the forest.

He slumps against a tree trunk, smoking a cigarette and trying to make his pulse even out to a steady rhythm again. He's about halfway through his cigarette when he hears the grass next to him rustle and someone sit down. He expects to look over and see Brian, but it's Jay--Jay, of all people--and Tim is immediately pissed off.

"Don't defend him."

Jay shrugs sympathetically, and it's not the first time Tim thinks he acts like Alex's abused girlfriend or something. "He told me he hasn't been sleeping lately. Something's--"

"Neither have I, and I'm not treating everyone like shit." Tim coughs into his fist a couple of times.

"Are you okay?"

Tim blinks at him. "What?"

"You said you aren't sleeping, and I don't know, you seem sick a lot."

For a moment, Tim isn't sure how to answer. He's not even sure how to begin to answer. When's the last time anyone noticed? "I'm fine," he says finally. "It's just a smoker's cough."

Jay nods, although he doesn't seem convinced. 

"So, why are you over here talking to me?" Tim stubs his cigarette out in the dirt. "Alex is your friend, right? You hardly know me."

"You think _I_ still want to be around him right now?" Jay shrugs again. "Anyway, I think he drove off."

Tim rolls his eyes. "Of course he did. Guess that means there's no reason for us to stay."

"Yeah... I think some of the others are already leaving."

Tim nods, but they both just sit there. It's close enough to sunset that some of the insects deeper in the forest have already started singing. "Brian keeps telling me he's usually a nice guy. I mean, he was at first..."

"He usually is."

Tim scratches at his neck. "I guess that sucks." Jay looks confused, and Tim shrugs. "'Cause he's your friend and he's being an asshole."

"Oh." Jay awkwardly fidgets with a loose string hanging from his sleeve. "Yeah, it sucks."

Tim shrugs, then gets to his feet. "I don't feel like going home. Want to grab something to eat or something? Someplace quiet. All that shouting gave me a headache."

"Uh, sure." Jay smiles a little, and Tim realizes that he hasn't seen him do that in a while, and that he's glad to see it now.

* * *

The frantic knocking at the front door startles Tim out of the half-sleep he'd slipped into maybe fifteen or thirty minutes ago. No, maybe longer, the clock reads 2:53 am. He drags himself out of bed and opens the door a crack.

It's Jay. "Are you okay?" he asks immediately. His eyes are wide and red around the edges.

Tim just stares at him.

Jay glances off to the side, as if he heard something. "Can I come in?"

"...Sure?"

Jay nods as he edges through the door and pushes it closed before Tim gets the chance to do it himself. He looks paler than usual under the hall light.

"Are _you_ o--"

"Why didn't you call? Where were you?" Jay suddenly blurts out.

"Where... What do you mean, where was I?"

Jay leans against the wall, wrapping his arms around himself. "You said you'd call, and you didn't. And then you didn't pick up your phone and you didn't come to the door when I knocked. Do you know what I've been going through? After what happened..."

"After _what_ happened?" Tim huffs a breath and leans forward, even though they're already standing close in the narrow hallway. "If you're going stand in my house and yell at me at... at like three in the morning, you need to at least try to make some sense, okay?"

Jay stares at him, like _he's_ the one not making sense. "A couple weeks ago, remember? You and Alex had that fight, then we went to get some dinner, and... we came back here to hang out and... Don't you remember?"

"Two weeks ago?" Tim shakes his head. "What are you talking about? I saw you a few days ago."

"No, you didn't. It's been two weeks. I couldn't _find_ you for _two weeks_."

Tim shakes his head again. The hallway suddenly seems claustrophobic, and he heads out to the living room. He feels strange. Numb. He's lost time before, but not since he was a kid. He tries to think about the last time he saw Jay, and the last thing that comes to mind is asking Jay if he wanted to eat. And that he was getting one of his bad headaches. 

He slumps onto his couch, swallowing down the sickness rising in his throat.

"You really don't remember," Jay mutters. He's standing at the end of the hall now, watching Tim like he's a bomb that might go off.

"No, I don't remember!" Tim snaps back. He digs in his end table drawer for his bottle of pills and downs one quickly without water. His throat is so raw that it hurts all the way down. And Jay is still fucking staring at him. " _What?_ Why are you standing all the way over there?"

Jay is silent for a long moment, then he comes over to Tim. He sits right next to him on the sofa instead of sitting in one of the chairs. "We went to this little Italian place I know that's pretty quiet and the lighting's kind of dim, because you said you had a headache." Jay's hands keep fidgeting with each other in his lap, and Tim finds himself watching them as he listens. _Really_ watching them, until the edges of his vision begin to darken around them. "We talked about Alex at first. Then, you told me how the dialogue in the movie kept making you think about going back to your hometown. And we had a couple beers, and we ended up coming back here, and I guess we talked some more, and..."

It takes a moment before Tim realizes that Jay isn't talking anymore, and he finally lifts his head to look at him. He has this weird expression on his face that Tim can't read. "And what?"

"Uh." Jay shakes his head. "After a while, there was this sound in the other room, and you went to go see what it was, and you... you came back and told me I needed to leave right away. There were still sounds coming from the other room, and you started dragging me to the door, and you said you'd call me."

"And then I was missing for two weeks," Tim whispers.

Jay nods.

Tim swallows thickly, then pulls out a cigarette. His hands tremble as he lights it. He takes a drag. "I was talking about home, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Guess that makes sense," Tim mutters, then he shakes his head, because there's no way he wants to explain to Jay _why_ it makes sense. "I'm sorry I didn't call."

"Why weren't you answering your phone or your door?"

Tim blows out a line of smoke and watches it lift into the air. "I don't know."

They're both quiet for a while. Tim smokes and Jay watches him smoke with this look on his face that's half fear and half... sadness, maybe. "There's something else," he finally says.

"Great," Tim says flatly.

"Nothing bad, it's just. We, uh. We kinda... kissed. I guess."

Tim lifts an eyebrow. "Kinda?"

"I guess we definitely kissed. Before the sounds."

Tim stubs out the cigarette in the ashtray on his end table. "I guess I feel worse for not calling you, now."

Jay breathes a little not-quite-laugh. "I didn't mean that. I don't really know how I feel about... that. I'm just telling you because. I don't know. It felt kind of wrong not to tell you."

"Yeah." Tim half smiles. "Was I any good?"

This time, Jay does actually laugh, although it sounds sad. "Yeah."

"Good." Tim looks away and furrows his brow. He doesn't remember how they got to the point that they were kissing, but he remembers Jay asking him if he was okay out under the tree that day, and again at the door just now, and for the life of him he can't remember the last time anyone actually bothered to ask him that. They'd just ignore the coughs. Ignore the dark circles under his eyes. Not Jay, though. "How about we forget the rest of this for a minute and try that kissing thing again?"

Jay blinks at him a few times. "Are... Are you serious?"

"Yeah." Tim shrugs. "Why not?"

Jay frowns, like he's trying to think of a good answer to that question. He doesn't seem to find one, though. "Okay."

Tim turns on the sofa to face Jay, and there's an awkward silence in which neither of them knows what to do. 

After a moment, Jay says, "You won't forget this time, will you?"

Tim grins softly. "I won't if you won't," he whispers as he leans forward.

* * *

The phone startles Tim awake. He's on the floor, by his bed. He doesn't remember how he got there, or how long he was asleep. He drags himself up to grab his phone on his bedside table, if only to stop the ringing. He doesn't recognize the number, but he answers.

"Hello?" He cringes at the sound of his own voice. His head is pounding.

"Hi, this is Jay. Is this Tim?" The voice on the other end seems familiar, but Tim can't place it. "You were in Marble Hornets. I was Alex's friend?" He pauses, then says again, "Jay."

"Oh. Oh, right, yeah. Hi."

"I have all of Alex's old tapes from that, and I'm planning to finish the project. I was wondering if we could meet sometime to talk about it?"

"Really?" He doesn't remember the movie being worth saving, but Jay probably knows more about that stuff than he does. "Uh... yeah, sure. Just. Hey, can I call you back in a minute?"

"Sure. Sure, all right... Is everything okay?"

"It's..." Tim frowns. "Yeah. I'll just. Call you back in a minute."

Tim pulls his phone away from his ear and looks at it his thumb hovering over the 'end' button. There's some thought or emotion or something flickering in the back of his mind, but it's like trying to remember a dream that's quickly slipping away. A conversation they had, maybe. Something that had seemed meaningful at the time.

He hears Jay's voice saying _Hello?_ through the receiver, and he clicks 'end'. He hardly knew Jay back then. They haven't spoken in three years. Whatever the memory is, it can't be that important, and by the time he digs his pill bottle out of the drawer, he's forgotten about it completely.


End file.
